Limerick 2

October 16, 2008

Proposition in a Time of Trouble

Comes one of those heartbreaking autumn days
when gleam and glory above all alternate,
and the moon will rise up full and fierce,
and I shall stay up very late.

You, there, I see you glance at me
with your collar up and your cap pulled down,
and a book of poems opened out
till the bus can sweep you into town.

How I must look from the rain-swept place
where Shannon widens to a little sea,
with my drunken misspeaking head-of-state
taking his swandive to obscurity.

Our banks are bust, our markets shot;
haves hide their heads among haves-not,
the spear gripped so tightly it rends
imagined foe, and ghost, and friends.

That you’re some feckless Mary-hailing Paddy
hardly needed to be said.
Yet I am one who thinks the world
limps cruelly till all opposites are wed.

I will withdraw my arrogant force,
you your Guinness-sloppy scorn,
and hold us-- as the gray-green sea
our thunderous lands–in cradling embrace till morn.

Bought two small paintings by Irish artist Robert Ryan from Gallery 75. My one hesitation was the tribulation of getting them home. Turns out, with a little creativity, they fit in my new wheel bag. They are tiny and magical and strange, all things in art I love. The woman who wrapped the paintings said I had been friendly to her in the Hunt Museum café.

I saw a rainbow over the Shannon this afternoon, and then a circle of rainbow around the moon over the roofs of O’Connell Street. Went to the second night of the Cuisle Poetry Festival. It started 45 minutes late, and I felt my last night in Limerick sifting away. The poets, again, were good, but the introductions were idiotic and everyone seemed to be at war with the microphones. Sat with Marian, who sucked wind through her teeth at the poems of the handsome Egyptian, which were in Arabic and (judging by the translations) bad, but she is a student of a Santa Fe Sufi master and it gave her a chance to shout something in Arabic.

In terms of the levelness and sustainability of my emotions, this has been my best trip to Ireland–as the last one was the worst. Sad that not falling in love should contribute to this, my leaving without a veil of years in the airport lounge (I suppose), but things are as they are, and I am content. No, I am happy. And ready for what comes.